I'm twenty eight right now. I love my job. I love my family. I feel like the last three sentences sound like the beginning of a trite, annoying country western tune. And I guess there is a part of me that realizes how so much of my life resembles a country song. I love playing with the kids in the backyard and making love to Christy and teaching a classroom full of hormonal, off-the-wall, insecure junior high kids.
I feel lost, though. I'm not entirely sure why. I read the blogs of friends who are living the urban experience and there is a part of me that feels jealous - not because I love the aesthetics of downtown, but because new urbanism is so cool and, well, I'm not. I remember thinking that I would be living in a barrio, raising a family in the same environment where I teach, feeling as though I was living something radical. Who knows, maybe I'd even grow an organic garden and get those black-rimmed glasses and really seem green.
It's not just that, though. I realize how superficial all of that is. It's more the sense of fragmentation that bothers me. I feel as if I am trying to fit in with a standardized school culture that wars against my soul and a suburban American culture that strikes me as banal; and the longer I try to work within the system, the more I feel as though I cannot be myself.
I want to write. I want to create art. I want to teach. I want to hang out with people over a cup of coffee and share life together. I want to spend time with Joel and Micah and really be present, without having my mind wandering toward my lesson plans. I want to have more of the long, meandering conversations with my wife, where we share the innermost part of each other. I want my life to connect, so that I don't feel as if my life runs on a spreadsheet.
I realize that I get to write, but it's in streaming ones and zeroes in a cyberspace so lonely that I rarely recieve even one comment on a blog post - where I have to self-censor because I know it is too long for a digital medium. I get to create art, but it is a structured hour a day, after school and we're censored by the constraints of conformity (and where I am teaching rather than painting). I get to teach, but I am forced into a standardized curriculum whose success is judged by a test that I consider heresy in a sacred vocation.
I want the freedom to be who I am or at least to be okay with the fact that I will never fit into the spreadsheet.
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This work is created by John Spencer and is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License. Feel free to use it, share it, mix it, mock it. Just don't use it to make money. Okay?
The views of this blog are those of the author only . . . and a few people crazy enough to agree with him. They do not in any way represent those of the Cartwright School District or its staff. If you find something offensive, please e-mail me at socialvoice@gmail.com and we'll engage in a respectful dialogue.
3 comments:
Warning, this might sound a little too cheesy. But I believe it, so take that into consideration...
I am inspired by many of the things you talk about doing with your students. So, I propose viewing your lesson plans as art. Instead of seeing your mind "drift" to lesson plans, you see it as being inspired to instigate change among your living canvas.
Like I said, cheesy. But I believe it. Be absolved. Plus, my glasses aren't all that cool. They don't see social injustice any different than anybody else's.
I think you are an awesome teacher from reading your blog. Plus, you are such a creative thinker for someone so young. It seems to me like you do manage to sneak in a lot of relevant lessons for your students in spite of all of the standardized curriculum. Just think of what this means for your students.
Many people feel this way....teachers included. It is "normal". Many of us work in the cavern of our classrooms. Outsiders rarely venture into it. WE must venture out of it.....and while we individually may not be able to change the whole mismanaged system, we can gain our little victories with our students, what we teach them, how we teach them and make an occasional small dent in the armor of the educational bureaucracy.
Take time for you. In my district, we are allotted two or three "personal leave days". Take one and do something for you. Do something with your wife, with your children.
Talk to others.....as you find, those not in the trenches of education cannot understand what we teachers truely do. It is like in a war, being in combat. You have to do it and come home to understand it. Those who never experience it, cannot begin to understand it.
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